[30] Elul contains from the middle of August to the
middle of September and
Tisri from that to the middle
of October. But the Nile begins to rise
in the middle of June, and
returns to its usual level in October.—­E.

[31] Of the Rabbinists or Talmudists.—­E.

[32] This may possibly have been the Sarcophagus brought
lately from
Alexandria, and deposited
in the British museum, under the strange
idea of having been the tomb
of Alexander. Benjamin seems to have
known nothing about the hieroglyphics,
with which his tomb was
obviously covered.—­E.

[33] This short commentary upon three words in that
part of the travels of
Benjamin, which has been omitted
in Harris, is extracted from Forster,
Hist of Voy. and Disc. in
the North, p. 92, and shews the extreme
difficulty of any attempt
to give an accurate edition of the whole
work, if that should be thought
of, as it would require critical skill
not only in Hebrew, but in
the languages of the different countries to
which the travels refer.—­E.

CHAP. VI.

Travels of an Englishman into Tartary, and thence
into Poland, Hungary, and Germany, in 1243.[1]

This earliest remaining direct account of the Tartars,
or Mongols receiving that name, which is extremely
short and inconclusive, is recorded by Matthew Paris,
in a letter from Yvo de Narbonne to the archbishop
of Bourdeaux, and is here given as a literary curiosity.

* * * *
*

Provoked by the sins of the Christians, the Lord hath
become as it were a destroying enemy, and a dreadful
avenger; having sent among us a prodigiously numerous,
most barbarous, and inhuman people, whose law is lawless,
and whose wrath is furious, even as the rod of God’s
anger, overrunning and utterly ruining infinite countries,
and cruelly destroying every thing where they come
with fire and sword. This present summer, that
nation which is called Tartars, leaving Hungary, which
they had surprised by treason, laid siege, with many
thousand soldiers, to the town of Newstadt, in which
I then dwelt, in which there were not above fifty men
at arms, and twenty cross-bow-men, left in garrison.
All these observing from certain high places the vast
army of the enemy, and abhorring the beastly cruelty
of the accomplices of Antichrist, signified to the
governor the hideous lamentations of his Christian
subjects, who, in all the adjoining provinces, were
surprised and cruelly destroyed, without any respect
of rank, fortune, age, or sex. The Tartarian
chieftains, and their brutishly savage followers,
glutted themselves with the carcasses of the inhabitants,
leaving nothing for the vultures but the bare bones;